The 2013 AHIP Institute will drill down to specific healthcare topics through its concurrent sessions, including one that will explore the "patient-centered financial home," which extends consumer engagement from clinical care delivery to benefits and payments.
The approach, building on knowledge from the patient-centered medical home model, promotes consumer awareness of the financial value of care coordination and provides transparency in the use of benefits and allocation of payments by health plan members.
The model aims to promote "consumer experience qualities," according to Bill Nordmark, senior vice president, Payer Economics at PaySpan, a presenter for the session "Empowering the Health Care Economy," on Thursday, June 13, as part of the track focusing on Driving Value through Improved Operations. PaySpan is a provider of healthcare reimbursement and payment automation.
"In the same way that payers are leading patient-centered medical home projects to engage a member or patient in their care delivery and their care, we are launching the patient-centered financial home and driving industry and payers to engage members on the financial aspects of health care and the usage of their benefits to increase value, improve quality and improve the consumer experience," he said.
As health insurance moves to an exchange model, payers are working more directly with their members versus through an employer.
The session goal is to communicate with leaders in industry to get the conversation started and to get as much feedback from payers as possible, Nordmark said.
Most people are willing to pay their responsibility. But when consumers receive an explanation of benefits (EOB) or a statement from the provider, they are often not sure if the insurer is paying it.
With financial transparency, the consumer "is seeing where my dollars are going, how I'm using those dollars, and how I can interact to pay my patient responsibility," he said.
The capability can be a payer-led extension of the payer's member portal that is used to engage the member, but it also has some consumer aspects for mobile portability as well.